Postcard: The Baobab of Middle-Earth

Heading back to camp in Tanzania, I saw this baobab in the distance and asked my guide Chili to stop the jeep. The scene begged me to take a photo and who was I to refuse.

The trunk was more than eight feet wide, its bark jagged and beat up by the weather and elephants that had scored its layers with their trunks.

I imagined the baobab in a fairytale; a tree that would possess some magical powers for its protagonist or represent some deadly threat that awaited a hero. It had a middle-earth quality that was only amplified by the storm cloud in the distance emptying its payload on the plains beneath.

I pictured the many years that it took to make the tree, and the leopards, monkeys and other creatures that had used it as an escape, a home or a bed over the years.